Beyond citations: Expanding the ICMR-IRIS for broader impact & accountability

Sir,

We are writing to commend the recent article¹, ‘Publication-Equivalent as the new single currency of research impact: The ICMR-Impact of Research and Innovation Scale (ICMR-IRIS),’ published in the August 2025 issue of the Indian Journal of Medical Research. We thoroughly enjoyed reading this paper, as we’ve always felt that citations alone are an incomplete measure of a paper’s true impact. The ICMR-IRIS’s approach of converting diverse research outputs into a single, unified metric called Publication-Equivalent (PE) is a commendable innovation. It effectively broadens the definition of impact beyond just academic citations, including contributions to clinical care, public health programmes, and the development of new health technologies. This flexible scale can be applied to evaluate a single project, a researcher, an institute, or even a funding agency. It’s a significant improvement over traditional metrics like the h-index, which only measure scientific impact, or complex tools like the Translational Research Impact Scale (TRIS), which are cumbersome due to their large number of indicators¹.

While the ICMR-IRIS is a significant advancement, we believe two additional metrics should be considered to further enhance its comprehensive nature. First, the metric of total views or readership should be included. Most scientific papers are primarily read by experts in the field, which limits their broader impact. As the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommend, PhD level scientists should be able to ‘communicate, both orally and in written form, the significance and impact of a study or body of work to all STEM professionals, other sectors that may utilize the results, and the public at large’². By incorporating readership and views as an indicator, we can encourage researchers to make their work more accessible and understandable to a broader audience, including students and developing scientists. This would help bridge the gap between specialized research and public understanding.

Second, cost-effectiveness should be a key consideration, especially in publicly funded projects³. While the social rate of return on publicly funded research and development is usually high, a direct link between the cost of a study and its financial impact is often overlooked⁴. Including cost-effectiveness could encourage researchers to be more mindful of resource allocation and seek to maximize the societal benefit for every rupee spent.

Incorporating total views and cost-effectiveness into a comprehensive impact assessment tool would provide a more holistic evaluation, encouraging research that is not only scientifically rigorous but also widely accessible and financially responsible. We congratulate the author on this important contribution and hope future iterations of ICMR-IRIS will consider these dimensions to expand its utility as a comprehensive measure of research impact.